Getting It Write

There was an article last week in the Newfoundland Independent about Kathleen Winter I've been meaning to post to for more than a week. It can be found here:

www.theindependent.ca/article.asp?id=1245

Kathleen was rather quietly shortlisted for another east coast prize, the Newfoundland-Labrador Book Award, won last week by Bernice Morgan. The judges had this to say of Kathleen's collection, boYs:

Kathleen Winters' BoYs is a debut collection of short fiction that thrives on its own unconventionality. Using whatever methods she can to defeat expectations (an elastic time-sense, odd details that constantly loom into the frame, interior monologues constructed out of the loose ends of dangling, half-spoken feelings) Winters rewards readers with deeply felt tales—funny, startling, often dark—about the relationships between men and women. Both spare and speeded-up, these stories have the energetic subtlety, kinetic quickness and emotional honesty of an original voice.

If you haven't yet picked up a copy of Kathleen's collection, let me urge you once more to do so. It's a splendid book, and her voice, as the judges' commented, is original. If you're a writer intending to submit to this year's Metcalf-Rooke Award -- which we'll be officially announcing the start of in the next few days -- it wouldn't be a bad idea to pick up one of the books by a previous winner: Kathleen's boYs, or Patricia Young's Airstream. It'll give you a sense of where the bar is at.